ash cloud

Xaver raises his eyes from the screen of his laptop and watches for a few seconds, without really seeing, a scene that would be astounding if it wasn’t what he sees everyday – since he established his office in the backstage of the cabaret. A tall and spidery dancer with blue hair is stringing a violin while chatting with an old guy with a low and booming voice – both are naked but for a long white wig worn by the man (a famous Australian actor seeking a fresh kick in the European underground scene) and a rope tied in karada style around the torso of the woman (a Canadian ballet-trained yogi with an impressive Internet visibility).

As the computer chimes, Xaver quickly reads the message that just arrived on his IM, types a few words for an answer, closes the laptop while standing up and goes to the door, interrupting the conversation as he has to pass between the two chatting at the door.

In the next room, a girl in fuchsia bathrobe and cleansing mask brushes one of three black wigs resting on Styrofoam display heads. He addresses her with a strained voice: ‘Here we are, I have my appointment with Johanna right now! I’m on my way!’ Without turning her head, she retorts: ‘Good for you…’ Clearly expecting no better, he heads to the exit door when she ask him: ‘Was it Aika I saw the other day in Amsterdam, what was she doing there? - No it wasn’t, if it had been her, she’d be all around D’s new double-neck Telecaster, you know her, she’s the only female guitar geek in Europe’ – even in a hurry, Xaver cannot help telling stories – ‘I guess you saw Yu, this Chinese-something dancer who came to audition. I was ready to sign her up right away, but I haven’t heard of her since… Must go now, ciao-ciao!’

Xaver doesn’t know yet that, in spite of her successful audition, Yu suddenly decided to fly to Jakarta in a desperate quest for meaning about her life and imminent death - he will learn it from Skullface much later, once Yu’s comatose body is brought back to Amsterdam, and won’t get all the details. But he will never forget her bizarre mix of violence and indifference, the troubled but vibrant sexuality expressed in her dance, and above all the vertiginous blankness of her Buddha face, even as she was rolling on the floor tearing off her clothes as if they were burning her skin (her personal idea of strip-tease it seemed).

For now, Xaver drives his coupé (he has a indulgence for sport cars and managed to keep this one through the last decade of financial ups and downs) on the way to finally meet Johanna, after weeks of almost humiliating negotiations with an endless chain of in-betweens. How she achieved in half a year what he’s been trying to do for more than twenty years could not only be the result of the money invested, or the professionalism of her communication staff! He has to know more, to find out how he can use this knowledge for his own agenda – or maybe join her cause.

As Skullface queues at the check-in desk at Airport Schiphol, this familiar state of paranoia that rises on such occasions (they always regard her as if she’s some suicide-bombing prone death-cultist), combined with intense airport-specific boredom, triggers flashes of intuitions about the events of the last weeks. She might have been a little bit too busy being cool about the whole Alicja/Devyani thing, could it be that she ended up manipulating herself in fear of being manipulated?

Reaching the control desk after more queuing, she notices the panic look in the eyes of the security woman (who presses discreetly a red button on her walkie-talkie), and her peripheral vision fills with converging uniforms. No big deal, she doesn’t have much baggage but anyway she had her suitcase put in the luggage hold, since she doesn’t want to be controlled with her metal toys prototypes – she’d rather avoid prompting a small-scale post-porn Brancusi controversy. Also she’s not wearing her favorite steel-toe Doc Martens or any superfluous metal, so the metal-detector gate doesn’t ring, but she’s body-searched anyway and adopts spontaneously a resigned crucifixion pose. ‘So much for death-cult’ she broods, as usually in this situation.

While standing there with wide open arms and being thoroughly scanned, Skullface thinks that she now has a clearer understanding of what is wrong with Alicja. Not morally or psychologically wrong like it would appear at first, that she doesn’t give a shit about, but deeply disloyal. She had forgotten the nauseous feeling of betrayal, for many years she – softly – managed to make clear that she’s not someone you want to mess with. But Alicja’s lunacy makes her both difficult to read and quite blind to elementary signals.

Skullface doesn’t care about legality, but if she has to do something illegal, she wants to do it purposefully, in full control and for worthy reasons. She decided to keep remote from the law like from any other kind of institution, to avoid as much as possible any kind of grip society could have on her. Now Alicja not only selfishly endangered her social autarchy, but she didn’t make her know it at any moment, leaving her store in her workshop materials that – if you think of it – cannot have legal provenance. While unsettled with the whole project, she’s been unaware that what felt at first innocuous could be actually the source of trouble.

The control people seem even more nervous than usually, apparently because of the increasing amount of travelers wearing little mirror disks in badges or pendants that signal them as supporters of Johanna - supporters, followers, adepts, fans, it’s not clear. They reluctantly admit that Skullface is not a threat to airborne transportation, and actually the woman who gives her back her handbag slightly smiles at her, but she’s wearing dark red nail polish and a ball-ring in her left tragus.

When Yu comes to the Lumpenkabarett the next day for the audition, she somehow manages to arrive one hour too early, takes this as a bad omen, and decides to give up the whole thing and to leave. She walks down Warmoesstraat in a dumb state, but when she reaches the Dam, she changes her mind again, goes back to the theatre, dives down the stairs in the dark and sits at the bar to wait for the manager.

On stage, a loose rehearsal is going on, or maybe the performers are having a break, because they’ve just been casually talking for the last ten minutes. It’s quite odd to see them in full costume but in non-performance mode – it has somehow more impact than when they are dancing or playing music! The front woman in expressionist black and white make-up is wearing thigh high boots with twelve centimeter heels, opera gloves, a leather choker and not much more. She seems to suffer from backache since she keeps twisting her spine and stretching with painful grins, locking her arms behind her head, or leaning frontwards completely – like dancers do –, still talking.

The tall musician – wearing similar but rougher make-up, and a black suit – just stands there looking in the void, answering with few words, and seems absorbed in intricate and somber thoughts – though this might just as well be an impression due to his make-up. Then he slowly puts down his guitar on its stand, walks to the black curtains that he tears open and rolls a wheeled mirror to the centre of the stage. He then undergoes an astonishing transformation: in a few gestures, he opens his black shirt, unbuckles his trousers that drop on his boots, messes up his long hair, twists his upper body like a hunchback and distorts his face in a grotesque grimace. It ‘s as if he conjured out of nowhere an obscene, hellish clown with a toothless and drooling mouth wide open, bulging eyes turned white, twisted fingers writhing with crustacean movements, the whole body seemingly moved by a slow cramp resolving in a silent scream, like in horror of seeing itself in the mirror…

Then, as suddenly as he had turned into this misshapen freak, the musician straightens up, quickly puts his clothes back on with a sulky pout – but here again it’s hard to tell – and a clearly skeptical sniff, and mumbles: ‘I’m really not sure’. The woman is now hanging upside down from a rail fixed on the upstage wall, loosening her sore backbone – she asks: ‘So, can we work on the new Johanna sketch, now?’ Since he doesn’t answer, she goes on: ‘Did you watch this YouTube video I e-mailed you yesterday? Johanna on some Austrian TV show, just baffling!’

At the sound of heavy steps descending the stairs, Yu switches from the stage to the forthcoming meeting, quickly recalling the pitch she prepared for the cabaret manager. It’s hard to tell if she belongs here, but at least she has to try.

While Mosshart, White and their colleagues leave the stage under the applause of the audience, the robot-crane camera flies to the lounge part of the set, where Johanna, sitting on her throne-like armchair, is as carefully lit as the band, in a quite similar way, with a subtly balanced mix of white, blue and ultraviolet. She wears light-reactive body make-up that makes her skin glow almost imperceptibly, her lips and nipples as pale as her skin, making her look like a living statue. A hidden tubular fan directed to her face slightly accentuates the movement of her long hair, and her voice is lightly pitched down, compressed, equalized and phased. It is as if she belongs to a faintly shifted dimension, where gravity, time and light are somehow different, and the fact that this is obviously artificial and the result of elaborated special effects seems to even increase its impact.

The program’s host seems very happy with himself, he obviously has an ace up his sleeve: ‘Johanna, I would like to show you something my crew shot yesterday evening in a Berlin cabaret... They have this show that claims to be a training program to survive what they call the inevitable collapse of the capitalist society’ – he grins ironically – ‘they are probably very happy that we advertise for them tonight because I doubt that anybody else pays attention to this kind of artsy-fartsy underground show...’

The camera frames Johanna’s face in close-up to catch her reaction but the director notices immediately how she de-focuses her eyes in a way that conveys a feeling of tremendous boredom, even though her face stays impassive. They have to keep this frame at least five more seconds or they’ll break the rhythm, but he whispers in the host’s ear-flap to cut the smart-ass comments and get to the point.

‘Or maybe they will be the next sensation, because for sure they caught the spirit of the time, as you will see right away. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have the pleasure to introduce you to the Hardcore Kunst Lumpenkabarett Dancing on Ashes!’

On the screen behind them, the logo of the show decomposes in accelerating squares, colliding with each other and vanishing in pixel explosions, revealing what seems to be a crouching bear, agitated with sudden quakes. A hand loaded with shining rings emerges from the creature, pulls what appears to be a heavy fur-coat to expose bare buttocks on top of high-heel boots. The soundtrack mixes drum-rolls, laughs and a high-pitched shriek that is probably guitar feedback. At the other end of the fur-coat a head rises, wearing a long blond wig and a latex mask bearing the features of Johanna. The fake Johanna crosses the stage ringed with black curtains on all four, growling like a wolf, while a recorded voice starts to tell the life of the Death Angel of Consumerism.

Boris has been very enthusiastic about his blog for eighteen months – it got high rates almost instantly, good reviews from peers and a few hundred followers within a few weeks, then thousands. People love his highly literary approach to fashion, his jaunts into imaginary worlds, his old-school dialogues with his cat, his hilariously hypochondriac fascination for body modifications, his cool-hunting in the underground, his way to never really follow trends while always being up to date somehow…

It did him some good for his work also, for which reputation is valuable, and he’s been a guest poster on some big blogs with international and mainstream visibility, remuneration, invitations to a few select fashion shows and parties… There he has more or less the status of a gifted dilettante and he’s OK with it, he doesn’t want to push his design work in the spotlights yet – doesn’t feel ready for it. But most people he gets to work with know him by reputation now, and have for him the kind of positive a priori famous cool people draw.

But lately the excitement has been fading away, maybe since he started to work and hang out regularly at the Lumpenkabarett – he thinks. For a while, the whole costumes, make-up, accessories thing was like an intense and hyper-focused fashion laboratory – combining playful twists of classicism and cabaret clichés with a total absence of the restrictions ordinarily due to modesty, though never indulging in easy extravagance. The DIY dark glamour he contributed to develop there appeals to his own contradictions, from the hysterisation of genders (like they say) as an anti-gender statement to the formidable efficiency of the alliance of futile entertainment and political subversion.

Back home from the cabaret, Boris usually feels quite inspired and lyrical about it, and writes his most praised posts, shamelessly reinventing the show, the people or his costumes more than actually describing them. The cabaret as much as his blog are fictional zones, where it is necessary to add a serious dose of fantasy, desire and imagination to reality to precipitate it into denser matter. He wrote somewhere about this that it is essential to address art, love, politics, religion and every important mental artefact with the same suspension of disbelief that is required for a B science-fiction movie.

But the Lumpenkabarett feels more and more like the only place in town where the air keeps breathable in an otherwise noxious atmosphere. It’s as if a titanic sulphur cloud has settled over Europe in the last few years, everybody seeing it coming, but half of the people being busy making it bigger, while the other half tries to do anything not to think about it. And since the cabaret people added the Johanna sketches to the Dancing on Ashes show, Boris started to look at this phenomenon as something more significant than the last empty hype it seems to be when you purposefully avoid TV and standard mass-media.

Then Boris realizes that both Johanna’s crusade and Dancing on Ashes’s travesty of it, while just shows, reach a level of reality that had utterly escaped him so far.

After dinner, Alicja spends her daily half-hour in the hothouse, watering the orchids – just moistening some, soaking others –, trimming what has to be trimmed, raking the dirt, devotedly scenting the complex perfumes of flowers, wet earth and decay carried by the damp atmosphere, improvising monotone songs in glossolalia to cheer up the delicate blooms…

Fulfilling these tasks leaves her relaxed and a bit high. Then she usually perfects the moment with a glass of Vieux Cognac served in a large balloon, and a figurado – at day time she favors cigarillos but back at home, she allows herself more serious smoking.
Biting her cigar tight, she wriggles out of her frock with the big glass still in her hand, struggling as the silk sticks to her moist skin, then kicks the cloth across the room – she is in a really good mood today! She goes to the big jewellery box resting on a tripod in front of a psyche mirror, rummages in it and fishes out a heavy white bronze necklace ornate with a huge sard stone that she casually puts around her neck. She admires the result in the mirror, blows a cloud of smoke to the ceiling, takes a sip of liquor and searches carefully for matching bracelets – she sets for an assortment of silver bangles.

While slipping them on her forearms, she thinks of Devyani’s recent account of how she used to use her bangles as brass knuckles in street fights when a teenager, and tries to imagine the luscious young woman as a brawling riffraff: the idea is quite exciting! Alicja puts the last ring around her knuckles, raises her fist to the mirror and tries to look threatening, then chuckles and wonders when Dev will be back – she’s been on tour for a few weeks now. Her absence is getting tiresome.

Slowly she walks across the big living room, exaggeratedly swaying to feel the metal jewels slither on her skin. From Devyani, her thoughts wander to Skullface, then to the bull excavation model she had her build – this is also exciting! It will be finished within one week, and she agreed with the craftswoman that she would deliver it herself at her place the next Friday, after office hours. She will wait for her in the greenhouse, open the door with a watering can in her hand – her gardening dress impregnated with the rich tropical scent –, and invite her to see her orchid collection. Then it’s double up, she’ll have exposed herself to Skullface, who either will enter her universe, or run away.

Alicja picks up a kimono, wraps herself in it and drops into the leather sofa in front of the flat screen. She’s planned to enjoy this solitary evening indulging in one of the very few pleasures she’s almost ashamed of: she will watch TV – or precisely she will watch Johanna on TV. She’s enthralled by how powerful and uninhibited Johanna became over the last months, taking control of the mass media by doing the contrary of what is expected, with an agenda opposed to all the standards usually hammered into the passive audience, opposed to the average commercial and political propaganda vomited by TV. And like everybody else, Alicja wants to know how far all this will go!
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Skullface slowly unwraps Devyani’s present. Spontaneously, she feels like incising the tape with a blade, unfolding carefully the Kraft paper (hand-pencilled with black paisley patterns) and saving it, but she doesn’t want Devyani to think she’s tight-assed, so she tears it off – it’s part of the ritual. Part of the ritual also is her face staying impassive while she extracts plum organza and lace, trimmed with purple and ivory embroidering and narrow satin ribbons. The slightest hint of a smile or a breath that could pass for a sigh would tip the scales of the amorous power game at stake.

Devyani has been struggling – gently and subtly, but still struggling – to have Skullface give up some of her austerity. Not that she is overly stern or dull – on the contrary, her steady mood makes her an agreeable companion, and she can be extremely funny, though she reserves this to a strictly private circle. But she usually leans toward a moderate behaviour, talks only when she has something to say worth breaking the silence, always chooses reading, working or training over partying or hanging out with friends.

Similarly, she favours plain simple clothes – workwear having her preference –, self-maintains her boyish haircut, and never wears the jewels she brilliantly makes, or any other (though of course a mere glimpse of her face tattoo makes obvious that she once has been wild beyond what most people can conceive).

Devyani never wanted Skullface to change for her, but she managed to open her to some of her fantasies – actually erotic fantasies (this is what it’s all about). After a period of passionate physical love, mutual discovery and utter tenderness, their foreplays started little by little to include negotiations about the use of some peculiar garments, jewels or gadgets...

Skullface plays her part with a sheer gravity and Devyani is never sure if there is genuine annoyance or if it is just game, because Skullface always surrenders in the end – though she almost never spontaneously initiates anything (she just has this thing with dildos but it’s another story). This ambiguity is actually enjoyable in itself, and the possible rejection – however unlikely – keeps Devyani’s heart beating with fear and excitement.

Sometimes the game strays beyond erotic fantasies and enters surrealistic areas – like the day Devyani challenged Skullface to wear the ugliest bunny outfit – white plush long-eared hood, hoses and sleeves on top of a crotchless pink fishnet body stocking, with the inevitable fluffy white tail on top of the buttocks. Skullface had a perfect revenge by subduing without protest, then wearing the costume all day long, parading in front of Devyani torn between shame and arousal. She could do nothing more than close all the curtains of the flat and witness her lover pursuing her day in the most normal manner, even going down to her workshop to pick some tools – it was a Sunday and it was closed, but still with a wide window to the street.

It took over a month before Devyani dared making Skullface another erotic gift, and she will never erase from her mind the disturbing image of her unsettling face and sharp body debased by this silly attire (and of course the bunny tail is still hanging from the bathroom’s mirror – Skullface’s own sense of humour). The elegant – almost luxurious – piece of French lingerie the woman just unpacked and now holds in front of her with an expressionless face but a slight and encouraging hips movement is probably an enduring consequence of the episode. ‘You could actually wear it in real life’ suggests Devyani, trying hard to sound unconcerned.

Aika is a little bit from everywhereShe doesn’t want it, but she’s a little bit from everywhereAika is genetically coolShe can’t really do anything else, but this she does perfectlyIn such a cool world, she even can make a living out of itBut then she can never leaveShe can never leave the cool worldTonight Aika is at the LumpenkabarettBecause it’s the cool place to beAnd of course, she’s a friend of one of the musiciansThe one with the spooky make up(And she is a friend of the sister of the PR of the placeWho sometimes subcontracts the cabaret program layout to her)When Aika entered the cabaret,She noticed right away this hip costume designerShe absolutely has to talk to him after the showBoris first of all checks the outfits he made for the showThe chick with the flute is going to dance at some pointThat’s why he put zippers on the sides of the leather miniQuite sexy for a girl, Boris thinks absent-mindedlySomehow he dumbly expected actual glowing cinder on the groundI’d put her in a see-through black lace Victorian dress, he chucklesBoris discretely takes a photo with his iPhoneIt will be on his blog tonightWhen does the show really start? he muttersBoris looks aroundAnd gets a glimpse of the girl with the tattoo on her faceSomewhere at a table in the back of the LumpenkabarettFuck, Skullface looks as serene as everHow does she do that? he wondersSkullface appreciates the fact that people in the audience are so quietSo far she enjoys the show – its slow unravellingShe likes this kind of focused work, it helps her to refocusIt’s easy to lose your point even when you have an imperious agendaShe’s so used to being looked at with her eerie face tattooThat she herself became a very good watcherBut tonight Skullface worries that people will thinkThat she’s part of the show or somethingAnd then she gets angry at herselfFor having such insignificant thoughtsAnd tries to forget herselfAnd to open her soul to what happens on stageJohanna is not at the Cabaret show tonight, of courseLater she will be on Das Erste againGuest starring on Harald Schmidt’s new night-showFor the moment Johanna is still in her apartment in CologneShe just sits still and concentratesThe people around her spontaneously became silent themselvesLike alwaysShe just wears a long white cotton tunicLike alwaysThat she will drop when she enters the TV setLike alwaysBecause she is the naked truthBecause she is dressed with the skyDressed with the four cardinal pointsBecause when she comes naked into the spotlights and speaksThey listen to herThey let her preach about the malevolence in our consumerist societyThey let her tell her story again, because that’s what the audience wantsBecause she is the last TV guruBut they don’t get that she could really be the last TV guruStill, she’s missing the Lumpenkabarett show tonightAnd then the flute player puts the flute on the floorAnd starts a slow danceAnd Aika watches but she doesn’t see herShe sees Iggy Pop and she sees Akira KasaiAnd she sees herself at the age of 10And Boris feels drawn to the danceHe feels his thigh muscles contract in unison with her movementsAnd Skullface notes how the dancer’s movements createA strange cluster of invisible lines in spaceLines and shapes that grow their own livelinessAnd Johanna would have observed how the smoke slowly stirs on stageAnd wraps the artists and the audience in an almost mystical fragranceAnd Aika loves the transparent black Thunderbird bassEverything on stage seems to revolve around it nowAnd Boris remembers the taste of his new lover last nightThen he observes himself remembering, then he dives into himselfAnd something in Skullface thinks of how the aspen leaves trembleIn the late spring breeze up northAnd Johanna could have felt something about humility and casualnessThat she will never reach again And he bartender stretches and gets ready for the post-show beer rush Though the show lacks the excitement that makes people thirsty And Aika smiles genuinely at Boris And Boris wishes he would play guitar And Skullface resolves a long lasting problem And nobody thinks that Johanna could have come to the show tonight
And Aika marvels at the sight of a rotating wristAnd Boris hasn’t ever been so at peace for monthsAnd Skullface feels like going home to work right nowAnd Johanna is told that the limo is waitingAnd the dancer leaves the stage, the musician stops playing and it’s over.

Just imagine a cold morning, a very cold oneAfter a wild party in the woods, a wild wild oneThe cabin reeks of cold tobacco, sweat, spilled beer and keroseneSkullface - who is not Skullface yet, but will be very soon -Wakes up from pain, then cold, then more painThe kerosene heater is far from enough, the wood fire is deadShe has to pick a few logs outside to start a new oneOr these drunken morons will freeze to deathAdrift in the vapors of their alcoholic sleepHer face is burning like hellShe also feels frozen and nauseated, but this is more familiarWrapped in a rough blanket over the clothes she slept in(For at least five days now)She loosely puts on her army boots and drags her feet to the doorShe stands shivering a couple of minutes in the doorwayStaring at what seems to her an almost petrified forestUntil she notices the liveliness of morning birds’ singingMoving has reactivated her blood circulationAnd revives the pain, and blood starts to drip on her faceShe enjoys every bit of itBecause she wanted it so badlyAnd now she is the queen of her tribeShe reached the acme of her street credibilityAnd she’s lost forever to the Christian capitalist bourgeois societyShe can’t smile because of the crusts on her lipsShe puts three logs in the rusted cast iron stoveAnd adds a glass of kerosene to start a quick fireThey won’t call her Snow White anymoreLike these suckers used toAnd they won’t call her the Austrian Virgin anymore(She used to pretend to be a virginIt aroused the guysWho talked of sacrificing her to Satan, or Odin, or HitlerBut of course she hadn’t been a virgin for a while alreadyWasn’t she raised in the CommuneUnder the rule of free love?)She softly touches her swollen face with icy fingertipsIt relieves the pain for a short whileShe has a pocket mirror somewhere in her rucksackBut she wants to feel it from the inside before seeing itAnd she knows that for a few daysHer face will be bruised and bleedingRight now she probably looks as scary as the KrampusThe devil that hunts children on the 5th of DecemberEvery year she expected and feared its celebrationWhen she visited her grand parents in the Berchtesgadener AlpsShe also brought some healing cream and her favorite painkillersBut yesterday’s cheap and strong Estonian vodkaStill keeps her numb enough for the momentA growl comes from one of the human shapesCocooned in sleeping bags on the cabin’s floorIt’s big Varulv, who spent half of the nightDrunkenly screaming to the treesHis hatred of humans and society and above all ChristiansVarulv who sang of destruction and blood and fireImploring unresponsive Nordic Gods to assist himIn his desperate fight against Christian capitalist nihilismThat allows the weak to rule the powerfulIn Norwegian police filesVarulv is recorded as the leader of this Black Metal gangThat gather today in the woods north of LillehammerHalf celebrating loose spring ritesAnd actually half running from the policeAfter the last wooden church arson reactivatedThe media’s hysteria against the rising Black Metal SatanismAnd the gang’s latent and constitutive paranoiaShe plays with the thought of Varulv’s reactionWhen he sees her ravaged faceDespite his outrageously staged misanthropyHe’s a sensitive and ambiguous boyThough struggling with his appetite for personal powerHe will love her and hate her for what she didShe will be the living icon of this gang of wrecked kidsShe who sacrificed her juvenile beauty to the DarknessWhen most of them are mere turbulent teenagersOn vacation from dull parents, schools and futuresBut where she’s from, standards are differentOtto will hate her, she can tell for sureFor the same reasons that Varulv willBecause she overpowered themThe old Viennese actionistAnd the young Black Metal thugShe is both a living piece of art walking the earthAnd a bloody spit at the face of societyAnd she did it alone, she’s only sixteen and already far aheadWell she did it almost aloneThe Russian guy who tattooed her claims to have learnt his artIn a Uralian gulagNot a political prisoner though, but what they called a hooliganA street kid re-educated in campsWho learned to love the Soviet Union like the mother he never hadAnd still does, though it has collapsed a couple of years agoHe had plenty of tattoo practice on his fellow zeksIncluding shocking face tattoosOnce relocated in the west (it’s not clear how this happened)He realized that there, tattooing pays much better than thieveryThe metalhead kids in Oslo love his genuine Mafiya tattoosThey line up in front of his tiny shop to get inkedAnd they invite him to their crazy partiesSometimes they do quite scare himThese little spoiled brats have no principles and no limitsThe girls are particularly scaryIn Motherland they never had to display this level of machismoThe German one he’s tattooed last nightSeemed to have plotted for monthsFor this conjunction to happenThe group of kids gathering in the forest away from OsloHim invited to supposedly the wildest party everThe presence of an unusual amount of fierce alcoholEverybody collapsing a little bit to soonHimself drunk enough to be convinced to do a face tattooOn an under-aged runaway(He would never have done this in his renowned tattoo parlorIn fear of loosing his license – wild days are behind!)But still he was able to hold firmly the needle and draw the linesOf a stylized skullOn this pretty face.

A few months before she flies to JavaTo die on the land of her ancestors(Well not exactly her ancestors but this is another story)A land she never visited beforeOr doesn’t know much about actuallyYu is in AmsterdamShe just had the confirmation that her Jonson syndromeHas reached the lethal point she feared all her short lifeSince her parents’ restaurant on Zeedijk closedShe hardly goes back to the Red Light DistrictAnd not at all since the dance studio on Koestraat closed as wellThat was a couple years ago, and things changed a lot sinceThe new city council, under the pressure of EUStarted the gentrification process of the areaNow at least a third of the famous windowsAre rented to fashion designersWho probably think they are so cool and daringTo share the district with prostitutes and drug dealersLike on American TV seriesNow the only guys dressed like pimps in the placeAre hyped young trendsetters and art studentsBetween their flea market phase and the minimalist oneYu also used to wear layers of 1€ clothes from WaterloopleinShe wore hideous woollen skirts over Adidas pants cut knee-highOver ragged jeans stuck in big flashy leg warmersAnd AFC Ajax scarf and ski cap she was particularly fond ofToday for the very first time she wears heels and a miniskirt(It’s springtime in A’dam)Because on the list of what she has to do before dyingThere are a few things related to sexFirst Yu passes by OudekerkpleinTo see this renowned anonymous ground sculptureOf a hand grabbing a titToday she takes the time to really look at itAnd slowly she feels the bronze handHolding her own bronze breastFirst she expects to sense nothingLike usuallyDreadfulness and excitement cancelling each otherBut today in this sluttish outfitYu catches something differentSomething violentRising through her shielded perceptionAs she stands over the sculptureA fat black woman in a white lace basqueLooks at her from her window, smilingStrangely she reminds her of these Matongué mamasWho board Euroline coaches at the Brussels bus stopThen she remembers this trip a few years agoWhen she first met this girl with the tattoo on her faceWho called her BuddhafaceLike Yu was the special oneBy then the stone Buddha had already started growing in herAnd had already taken control of her heartAnd brainAnd bodyAnd faceNow, before the weight of the mineral BuddhaDrags her to the tombShe must start her own questAnd experience… well, everythingOr at least something elseBut there’s nothing she can share anymoreNeither with friend or loverShe was never deprived of eitherShe was always eager to bathe herself in warm feelingsBut now she’s beyond thatBeyond the illusion of love and friendshipNow it’s time for the body to be crude and raw and freeYu walks by the sex-shop windows along the VoorburgwalAs a teenager she used to come around with her gangPointing at giant dildos, crotchless panties and riding cropsBursting into laughter and squeaky screamsHissed away by half-irritated half-amused hookersAlone she’d usually just look straight and walk slightly fasterToday she stops and looks for goodShe looks to see and see beyondThe whole city revolves around merchandised sexAnd later in school when amongst a group of foreign studentsIt’s understood that you talk casually and slightly blaséAbout sex toys, porn, prostitution, group sex and stuffBut kids have a way here to develop selective blindnessAbout grown-up matters, and later on it’s simpler to go on like thisSo today she really looksFor the first timeShe tries to imagine manufactured objects loving herHow their technological indifference would be stimulatingShe tries to imagine herself attired in fishnet and rubberWarmth underlaid by cold and soft by hardBeing exposed in this ineptly inverted intimacyWould somehow feel right again in our upside-down realityYu checks around if people noticed her staring at a windowBut here it’s all very normal, and it looks mostlyLike a cheap souvenir shop windowFor loudmouth Russian businessmen who couldn’t come homeWithout a penis-shaped crystal bong and a few salacious storiesAnd aroused French couples on extended weekend tripsYu wants to get inside one of these shopsBut not a cheap one with plastic day-glow gadgets and pink laceSo she walks around to find a more attractive placeUntil she remembersThat the only shops that are not targeted at philistinesSell fetish clothes and bondage accessoriesThen she knows where to goYu contemplates a wall-display covered with leather masksSurgical steel butt-plugs, handcuffs, anal hooks, ball-gags, whipsCorsets, slave collars, hoods, chain harnesses, chastity belts,Cock rings and cages, nipple clamps, leg-spreaders, straps, ropesStrap-on dildos, spanking skirts, love balls and designer sex toysSlightly high with the heady smell of rubberA part of her feels overwhelmedBut mostly she feels distant and a little bit sadAs if all this belongs to a past that never occurredShe can’t be burdened with objectsShe can’t be hidden or disguisedShe’s standing there for a long while in front of this love weaponryAs if entrancedThe shop hostess leaves her aloneA pretty, sexy and seemingly crazy Asian girlStaring at the complete paraphernaliaMeant to turn her into the ultimate sex slaveThis is good for businessYu knows now what she was looking for in the Red Light DistrictShe wants to be looked atWith nothing between her and the viewerNo clothes, no dance, no love, no feelingsShe wants to be freed from saṃsāraShe doesn’t want to think too much because she will be scaredShe has to do it right nowShe remembers this club on WarmoesstraatA kind of underground place mixing sex shows and cabaretOne or two girls from school have been dancing thereFor the thrills, quick money and street credibilityIt is open 24/7, but you have to know how to find itThey pretend to be illegal, that’s the best advertisementThis strong stench of beer yeast and sweatPeople have to get used to since smoking is forbiddenRises from the descending staircaseIn the hall there are big photos of live sex acts from the 80sAnd black and white posters announcing the current show“Dancing on Ashes” aka “the Lumpenkabarett”The room is very dark but the stage is brightly litA half-naked girl in kabuki make-up just stepped in the spotlightsYu sits at the table closest to the entrance doorAnd waits for the end of the sketch to try to get noticed by the crew.